Tag: National Debt

Congress has returned to doing what it loves most: spending money we don’t have. Increased spending in the latest bipartisan budget deal, along with the recent Republican tax cuts, will vastly increase the deficit.

Principled conservativesobjected, but were ignored in the scramble to give the American people what they want: more government spending without having to pay for it. Both parties are happy to deliver. With some worthy exceptions, Republicans who had bitterly criticized the “Obama deficits” are now eagerly embracing enormous Trump deficits.

This is sinful, but few people think of government deficits in such terms. This is not due to any reticence about political moralizing per se. Much of our political discourse now consists of dismissing our opponents as moral monsters and declaring “I’m better than you.” Why, in this atmosphere, is deficit spending one of the few issues about which more moralizing might be in order?

There seem to be two main factors behind our disinclination to describe persistent deficit spending—and the massive national debt it produces—as a moral wrong. The first is that the national debt doesn’t seem real to us; it is just numbers somewhere in the ether. Even people who consistently oppose reckless deficit spending tend to treat it abstractly. The second is that both parties are thoroughly guilty of contributing to the problem, so partisans have a strong incentive to be indulgent on the subject.

The National Debt Steals People’s Futures

Nonetheless, this is a moral problem. Our national debt steals from other people’s futures in a way that mere personal debt does not. For instance, if I borrow money, whether for a house, a car, an education, or a shiny new cell phone, I am the one who will have to pay it back or suffer the consequences (harassment by collection agencies, repossession, bankruptcy, and so on). The debt is mine, and so are the consequences if I borrow more than I can repay.

But while the money we’re borrowing as a nation will have to be paid back, those doing so will not be the people who get it. Federal deficit spending is not like going into personal debt. It is like grandma going on a binge with her grandchildren’s credit cards. It is parents signing away their children’s future for some government handouts now.

It is wrong to place our children and grandchildren under enormous debt. It is a sin against them. But we don’t think of deficit spending that way. Parents and grandparents who otherwise work hard to help their children and grandchildren succeed have no compunction about burdening them with endless budget deficits resulting in a crushing national debt.

This is not only because the deficit and debt seem remote in a way that personal credit card bills are not, but also because many people are unaware that the sources of the deficit are some of the federal government’s most popular programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and military spending. Few people want to cut these, and the next largest expense is paying the interest on our nation’s existing debt, which can’t be cut without causing a global financial crisis.

There is no easy solution, though voters enjoy being lied to and told that one exists (if only the other party weren’t obstructing it). As ridiculous as some federally funded programs can be (e.g., Harry Reid’s cowboy poetry), they aren’t the real problem. The deficit cannot be fixed by cutting foreign aid or the National Endowment for the Arts, or by taxing the rich just a bit more. It cannot be fixed by addressing “waste, fraud and abuse.” The real money is spent on the military and middle-class welfare programs.

Yes, Your Favorite Government Programs Are Welfare

And they are welfare programs, even if that appellation makes many beneficiaries uncomfortable. Social Security is a not a retirement account the government maintains for you. It is a transfer program, in which today’s workers are taxed to pay today’s retirees and the disabled. The amount someone pays in is not what he or she will get out, and many people receive far more in benefits than they paid in.

Likewise, Medicare is not a health savings account administered by the government. It is an incredibly expensive welfare program in which those currently working pay for the health care of the elderly and disabled, with lifetime costs for beneficiaries usually far in excess of what they paid into the program.

That these are welfare programs does not mean they should be eliminated. Wealthy societies with strong economies can afford some welfare spending, or even a lot of it. However, honesty about what these programs are and what they are for is necessary if we are to keep from being bankrupted by them. We must face the reality that the typical welfare queen isn’t a black mother in the inner city, but a middle-class white retiree.

Refusing to Pay for This Welfare Is Immoral

If we want generous middle-class benefits, we will need to drastically cut defense spending and raise taxes, including on the middle class. If we are not willing to do that, then we need to reform our entitlement programs to be sustainable. Either way, the sooner we address these problems, the less painful the adjustment will be. The more indebted and dependent our nation is, the more it will hurt when we run out of easy credit.

But right now, politicians (who are well aware of the problems of endless deficits) are terrified of voters punishing them for any changes. Both parties have campaigned on protecting entitlements, and both have attacked the other for attempting reform. Young voters, who will lose the most on our current trajectory, are often disengaged and besotted with adolescent socialist fantasies.

Meanwhile, retirees and near-retirees vote. They aren’t keen on politicians who raise taxes or cut military spending, and they will annihilate any politician who threatens their government checks and health care. The youth are checked out or feeling the Bern, while their elders are selling them down the river.

The electoral math suggests that there will be no reform or restraint except what will eventually be forced on us by the pitiless math of accounting and economics. That will be a painful reckoning. The consequences will be severe, and those who oppose putting our national finances in order are sinning against their children and grandchildren.

Parents and grandparents who otherwise work hard to help their kids have no compunction about burdening them with endless budget deficits resulting in a crushing national debt.

Congress has returned to doing what it loves most: spending money we don’t have. Increased spending in the latest bipartisan budget deal, along with the recent Republican tax cuts, will vastly increase the deficit.

Principled conservativesobjected, but were ignored in the scramble to give the American people what they want: more government spending without having to pay for it. Both parties are happy to deliver. With some worthy exceptions, Republicans who had bitterly criticized the “Obama deficits” are now eagerly embracing enormous Trump deficits.

This is sinful, but few people think of government deficits in such terms. This is not due to any reticence about political moralizing per se. Much of our political discourse now consists of dismissing our opponents as moral monsters and declaring “I’m better than you.” Why, in this atmosphere, is deficit spending one of the few issues about which more moralizing might be in order?

There seem to be two main factors behind our disinclination to describe persistent deficit spending—and the massive national debt it produces—as a moral wrong. The first is that the national debt doesn’t seem real to us; it is just numbers somewhere in the ether. Even people who consistently oppose reckless deficit spending tend to treat it abstractly. The second is that both parties are thoroughly guilty of contributing to the problem, so partisans have a strong incentive to be indulgent on the subject.

The National Debt Steals People’s Futures

Nonetheless, this is a moral problem. Our national debt steals from other people’s futures in a way that mere personal debt does not. For instance, if I borrow money, whether for a house, a car, an education, or a shiny new cell phone, I am the one who will have to pay it back or suffer the consequences (harassment by collection agencies, repossession, bankruptcy, and so on). The debt is mine, and so are the consequences if I borrow more than I can repay.

But while the money we’re borrowing as a nation will have to be paid back, those doing so will not be the people who get it. Federal deficit spending is not like going into personal debt. It is like grandma going on a binge with her grandchildren’s credit cards. It is parents signing away their children’s future for some government handouts now.

It is wrong to place our children and grandchildren under enormous debt. It is a sin against them. But we don’t think of deficit spending that way. Parents and grandparents who otherwise work hard to help their children and grandchildren succeed have no compunction about burdening them with endless budget deficits resulting in a crushing national debt.

This is not only because the deficit and debt seem remote in a way that personal credit card bills are not, but also because many people are unaware that the sources of the deficit are some of the federal government’s most popular programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and military spending. Few people want to cut these, and the next largest expense is paying the interest on our nation’s existing debt, which can’t be cut without causing a global financial crisis.

There is no easy solution, though voters enjoy being lied to and told that one exists (if only the other party weren’t obstructing it). As ridiculous as some federally funded programs can be (e.g., Harry Reid’s cowboy poetry), they aren’t the real problem. The deficit cannot be fixed by cutting foreign aid or the National Endowment for the Arts, or by taxing the rich just a bit more. It cannot be fixed by addressing “waste, fraud and abuse.” The real money is spent on the military and middle-class welfare programs.

Yes, Your Favorite Government Programs Are Welfare

And they are welfare programs, even if that appellation makes many beneficiaries uncomfortable. Social Security is a not a retirement account the government maintains for you. It is a transfer program, in which today’s workers are taxed to pay today’s retirees and the disabled. The amount someone pays in is not what he or she will get out, and many people receive far more in benefits than they paid in.

Likewise, Medicare is not a health savings account administered by the government. It is an incredibly expensive welfare program in which those currently working pay for the health care of the elderly and disabled, with lifetime costs for beneficiaries usually far in excess of what they paid into the program.

That these are welfare programs does not mean they should be eliminated. Wealthy societies with strong economies can afford some welfare spending, or even a lot of it. However, honesty about what these programs are and what they are for is necessary if we are to keep from being bankrupted by them. We must face the reality that the typical welfare queen isn’t a black mother in the inner city, but a middle-class white retiree.

Refusing to Pay for This Welfare Is Immoral

If we want generous middle-class benefits, we will need to drastically cut defense spending and raise taxes, including on the middle class. If we are not willing to do that, then we need to reform our entitlement programs to be sustainable. Either way, the sooner we address these problems, the less painful the adjustment will be. The more indebted and dependent our nation is, the more it will hurt when we run out of easy credit.

But right now, politicians (who are well aware of the problems of endless deficits) are terrified of voters punishing them for any changes. Both parties have campaigned on protecting entitlements, and both have attacked the other for attempting reform. Young voters, who will lose the most on our current trajectory, are often disengaged and besotted with adolescent socialist fantasies.

Meanwhile, retirees and near-retirees vote. They aren’t keen on politicians who raise taxes or cut military spending, and they will annihilate any politician who threatens their government checks and health care. The youth are checked out or feeling the Bern, while their elders are selling them down the river.

The electoral math suggests that there will be no reform or restraint except what will eventually be forced on us by the pitiless math of accounting and economics. That will be a painful reckoning. The consequences will be severe, and those who oppose putting our national finances in order are sinning against their children and grandchildren.

When people are dependent on the government they are much easier to control. We are often told that we are not “compassionate” when we object to the endless expansion of government social programs, but that is not how the debate should be framed. In America today, well over 100 million people receive money from the federal government each month, and the number of Americans that are truly financially independent is continually shrinking. In fact, only 25 percent of all Americans have more than $10,000 in savings right now according to one survey. If we eventually get to the point where virtually all of us are dependent on the government for our continued existence, that would give the globalists a very powerful tool of control. In the end, they want as many of us dependent on the government as possible, because those that are dependent on the government are a lot less likely to fight against their agenda.

Back in 1992, the bottom 90 percent of American income earners brought in more than 60 percent of the country’s income. But last year that figure slipped to just 49.7 percent. The wealth of our society is increasingly being concentrated at the very top, and the middle class is steadily being eroded. Surveys have found that somewhere around two-thirds of the country is living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time, and so living on the edge has become a way of life for most Americans.

Earlier today, I came across a Business Insider article that was bemoaning the fact that the U.S. economy seems to be rather directionless at this point…

We do not have a real plan for health care, and costs continue to gobble up American wages.

We do not have a plan for dealing with globalization and economic change, but that change continues to shape our economy.

We don’t have a plan to update our decrepit infrastructure.

The one plan we did have — the Federal Reserve’s post-financial crisis program — is about to be unwound, marking the end of the last clear, executable plan to bolster America’s economy.

Ultimately, the truth is that we don’t actually need some sort of “central plan” for our economy. We are supposed to be a free market system that is not guided and directed by central planners, but many Americans don’t even understand the benefits of free market capitalism anymore.

However, that Business Insider article did make a great point about globalization. Most people don’t realize that our economy is slowly but surely being integrated into a global economic system. This is really bad for American workers, because now they are being merged into a global labor pool in which they must compete directly for jobs with workers in other countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.

Most of the workers at the new Audi factory in the state of Puebla, inaugurated in 2016 and assembling the Audi Q4 SUV, which carries a sticker price in the US of over $40,000 for base versions, make $2.25 an hour, according to the Union.

Volkswagen, which owns Audi, started building Beetles in Puebla in 1967 and has since created a vast manufacturing empire in Mexico, with vehicles built for consumers in Mexico, the US, Canada, and Latin American markets.

Volkswagen, Ford, GM, or any of the global automakers, which can manufacture just about anywhere in the world, always search for cheap labor to maximize the bottom line.

Would you want to work for $2.25 an hour?

Over time, millions of good paying jobs have been leaving high wage countries and have been going to low wage countries. The United States has lost more than 70,000 manufacturing facilities since China joined the WTO, and this is one of the biggest factors that has eroded the middle class.

In a desperate attempt to maintain our standard of living, we have gone into increasing amounts of debt. Of course our federal government is now 20 trillion dollars in debt, but on an individual level we are doing the same thing. Today, American consumers are over 12 trillion dollars in debt, and it gets worse with each passing day.

The borrower is the servant of the lender, and most Americans have become debt slaves at this point. This is something that Paul Craig Roberts commented on recently…

Americans carry on by accumulating debt and becoming debt slaves. Many can only make the minimum payment on their credit card and thus accumulate debt. The Federal Reserve’s policy has exploded the prices of financial assets. The result is that the bulk of the population lacks discretionary income, and those with financial assets are wealthy until values adjust to reality.

As an economist I cannot identify in history any economy whose affairs have been so badly managed and prospects so severely damaged as the economy of the United States of America. In the short/intermediate run policies that damage the prospects for the American work force benefit what is called the One Percent as jobs offshoring reduces corporate costs and financialization transfers remaining discretionary income in interest and fees to the financial sector. But as consumer discretionary incomes disappear and debt burdens rise, aggregate demand falters, and there is nothing left to drive the economy.

This debt-based system continuously funnels wealth toward the very top of the pyramid, because it is the people at the very top that hold all of the debts.

Each year it gets worse, and most Americans would be absolutely stunned to hear that the top one percent now control 38.6 percent of all wealth in the United States…

The richest 1% of families controlled a record-high 38.6% of the country’s wealth in 2016, according to a Federal Reserve report published on Wednesday.

That’s nearly twice as much as the bottom 90%, which has seen its slice of the pie continue to shrink.

The bottom 90% of families now hold just 22.8% of the wealth, down from about one-third in 1989 when the Fed started tracking this measure.

So how do we fix this?

Well, the truth is that we need to go back to a non-debt based system that does not funnel all of the wealth to the very top of the pyramid. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t even realize that our current debt-based system is fundamentally flawed, and it will probably take an unprecedented crisis in order to wake people up enough to take action.

As the vulture pundits in the mainstream media pick apart hollow political scandals, the essential bankruptcy of the federal government looms just ahead. The national debt is creeping toward 20 trillion dollars, and the United State’s largest problem is once again staring the world in the face.

Just before the government was slated to shut down in 2015 (as it did in 2013), Congress was able to pass a delay on the debt ceiling decision until March 15th of this year — Wednesday of this week. Recurring uncertainty caused by events like this has implications that extend far beyond our own borders. The amount of leverage in the current system has already forced foreign holders of U.S. debt to question the real value of America’s full faith and credit.

2016 was a record-setting year for the liquidation of foreign-held U.S. bonds, topping out at nearly $405 billion. The selling was led by China, America’s second-biggest creditor, which currently holds over $1 trillion of U.S. debt, almost 28% of the total held by foreign central banks. They weren’t alone, though, and even the U.S.’ number one lender, Japan, has rolled back their positions to protect themselves as the reality of U.S. insolvency comes into focus. A gradual change has been set in motion, and the global superpower status of the United States may be systematically eroded — not militarily, but economically.

f the government does shut down again, the Treasury Department reportedly has as little as $66 billion in reserves and just enough income from taxes to meet its essential obligations. Entitlements like social security and Medicare will likely be unaffected, but if lawmakers can’t collaborate to pass some kind of resolution, the power to allocate additional federal spending will largely be turned over to President Trump. The initial hiring freeze on federal employees that was implemented shortly after his inauguration could be just a taste of what’s to come.